A presidency running on praise

There is something unmajestic about watching an entire political party walk-the-plank while singing “Hail to the Chief.”

The United States under the Republicans is now officially a five-banana republic. The evidence is everywhere. It comes in the form of things big and little. Let’s start with a little one.

Newsweek magazine reports that Donald Trump has faked his Twitter numbers. How? By buying 50 per cent of his followers. They have no faces and never tweet, but love Donald. Nothing like bot love.

Trump probably heard that Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber had more followers. In the sand box of Trump’s narcissistic playground, he must, it seems, corner the market on all the pails and shovels. As every mother knows, there is a Trump-in-training-pants in every daycare. It’s just unusual for them to have the nuclear codes.

And here is a big thing.

The Republican House of Representatives had a second go at passing a bill to replace Obamacare. After much nose-twisting and ear-pulling by the White House, they succeeded. A chorus of toads in the mainstream media harrumphed that it was a great legislative victory for the president. As legislation goes, it was more like the dead octopi they throw on the ice at hockey games.

Since counterfeiters have had more success passing bills in the United States than Trump, the president too was ecstatic. He rented a convoy of buses and schlepped the entire Republican House contingent to the White House. There, he presided over a celebration for them in the Rose Garden. The lapdogs had pleased their master and got their obedience treats. But the mutts would soon have sore butts.

When the House bill went to the Senate, the same Donald Trump who had praised House Republicans now denounced their bill as “mean.” He promptly asked the Senate to fix this Scrooge-like effort so he could replace Obamacare.

It needed more money, lots more money. So much more that it would look less like the Republican House bill and more like Obamacare. That is Trump talk for promise kept.

Meanwhile, the Senate leadership has been practising the new art of legislating in secret. No one has seen the altered bill, and even Republican senators are saying you can’t vote for something you’ve never read, particularly when it accounts for 17.8 per cent of GDP, and is set to grow 19.9 per cent by 2025.

As for those meanies from the Republican House side, they were “stunned” by Trump giving them a hearty shove under the bus. Some of them now predict “lingering and possibly devastating effects on his credibility among House Republicans.”

I wonder what credibility they are referring to? Would it be his electoral “landslide”? Perchance the first cheque from the Mexicans for the wall? Or that his initial act as president would be to instruct his attorney general to prosecute ‘Crooked Hillary’? Or that Obama really is from Kenya? Or that the investigations into Russiagate are part of a witch-hunt? What?

And did you happen to catch that come-to-Donald love-in billed as a cabinet meeting? A new record was set for most-sycophants-in-one-room licking the boss’s boots for the cameras.

Trump went around the table, inviting each to offer their personal eulogies to him. On and on it went. Gravol sales soared across the nation as each cronie-acolyte tried to outdo their fellow flunkies. The only un-butt kisser was Gen. James Mattis. Trump frowned and quickly moved on. The rest more than made up for Mattis’ lonely show of integrity.

Agriculture minister Sonny Perdue made the oleaginous claim that “they love you there” — referring to rural America’s affection for Trump, with whom they have so much in common.

Best grovel of the day went to Vice-President Mike Pence.

With the dewy eyes of a televangelist trying to shake down the flock for five bucks, he intoned that it was the “highest privilege” of his life to serve as Trump’s VP. One could only hope Mrs. Pence wasn’t watching.

To me, Trump’s first full cabinet meeting looked more like a birthday party for Kim Jong-un. You either sucked up to the Great Navigator with brio or faced death by artillery shell in the morning.

The Orange One was so revved up by this orchestrated praise-fest, he heaped some on himself.

His presidency, Trump noted, was setting records for the most productive in U.S. history. He did admit that Franklin Delano Roosevelt might be close. His only real record-breaking accomplishment to date is having more of his men under investigation by the FBI than Al Capone. He himself has finally admitted that he is under investigation for firing James Comey.

Gallup, by the way, painted a different picture of a president VP Pence called “a truly wonderful man.” It’s most recent poll showed a 59 per cent disapproval rating of the president’s performance to date.

The rolling out of Trump’s new Cuba policy was nearly as ghastly as the cabinet meeting. It was a triumph of 1950’s Cold War rhetoric over substance. It was the aluminium siding salesman striking again.

With Miami’s Little Havana as his backdrop, the president delivered the standard list of indictments against Commie Cuba. He railed against political arrests, imprisonments, firing squads and torture.

(This is the same Donald Trump who on January 25, told ABC News that he believes torture “works.” In fact, his administration is currently mulling over whether to restore waterboarding and reopen CIA-run black site prisons outside the United States. When it comes to the beheaders Trump said, “You have to fight fire with fire.”)

Castro-haters in the crowd (and that meant everybody) shouted out their love for Trump. The shouts grew louder when he announced he was ending wicked President Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba.

Actually he didn’t. The U.S. is keeping its embassy in Cuba open, Americans can still go to Cuba in group tours, (600,000 visited last year) and American companies can still do business in Cuba. It’s just that new investment can’t get into the hands of the Cuban military.

And for those impressed with Trump’s sudden interest in human rights in Cuba, remember that while in Saudi Arabia, he and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson joined in what The Washington Post called “the sinister, all-male” sword dance, endorsing a culture that treats women like chattels, exports terrorism, and cuts off more heads than ISIS ever has.

Trump has so openly and egregiously turned the U.S. government into a highly profitable branch of the Trump business empire that he is now being sued by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

They allege that his inescapable involvement in his family business violates the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Hard to argue: President Trump has doubled membership fees at Mar-a-Lago and China has given him a slew of valuable licenses despite its own law barring the use of foreign leaders names as trademarks.

Is the Orange One rattled? Apparently not.

Who did he just appoint to administer federal housing programs in New York and New Jersey involving billions of dollars? Lynne Patton.

Patton has no background in housing, but has planned and run golf tournaments for the Trump Organization for eight years.

Since 2011, she also served as vice-president of the Eric Trump Foundation until it closed its doors this year. The foundation remains under investigation by the attorney general of New York for allegedly siphoning millions in charitable donations to the Trump Organization.

America’s people, jaded with politics as usual, have put thugs and liars in the White House. It will take the very best of America’s institutions to get them out.